How 'The Hottest Day in History' fizzled

Six degrees of separation. Six points on the Fahrenheit temperature scale that made the difference between a flock of visitors to Death Valley last week experiencing The Hottest Day in History and just a really, really unpleasantly hot day.

Summer is always hot in Death Valley. The Hottest Day in History was recorded July 10, 1913, when the thermometer at Death Valley's aptly named Furnace Creek reached a skin-scalding 134 degrees. That's the world record. (USA! USA! USA!) Death Valley, now a national park, plans a centennial celebration this week.

Most people would be as far away as they could from a triple-digit helping of sunshine like that. I'd be by the beach or under a shady tree, reading about Reykjavik, Iceland (all-time record high: 78 degrees).

But heat can drive people a little nuts. A lot of heat evidently drives some of them to Death Valley.

A buzz started building during the last week of June that the final weekend of the month might be one for the record books. A massive dome of high pressure was parking itself over the desert Southwest. Temperatures were going to skyrocket, and record highs were threatened from Arizona to Nevada.

Upon hearing the news, I dialed up the air conditioner. But a small army of others headed east toward Death Valley. The movement was nudged along by a report in the Banning-Beaumont Patch, an online community news website.

Kevin Martin, a Corona-based meteorologist-blogger, forecast on the Patch that The Hottest Day in History record would fall. He was going - and so was his mom. Martin packed up his gear and headed toward Death Valley's Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. Martin calculated it was two degrees warmer there than at any given time at Furnace Creek.

The Web is nothing if not an exceptional echo chamber, and soon the forecast in this one small website was tweeted, retweeted, liked and posted across the digital universe. It was posted on LAObserved.com, a popular media website that made sure it got before the eyes of every newspaper editor and television news director from Santa Barbara to San Diego. The Hottest Day in History was nigh! Be part of the moment! Get there while it's hot!

Among those who decided to take a gamble on bearing witness to this heatstroke was my friend and former Register photographer Chris Carlson. He now shoots for The Associated Press wire service, which goes out to just about every sizable newspaper, magazine, television station and online news outlet in the world.

If the forecasts were right, Chris would be the guy to show the world what it looked like on The Hottest Day in History. Just suck it up, try not to scorch your eye socket on the camera viewfinder, then sit back and wait for the Pulitzer Prize committee to call.

Anybody who has ever planned a kid's backyard birthday party or an outdoor wedding knows what happened next. The weather refused to play along.

The sun teased and taunted the gathered throng. The mercury passed 100 by early morning and climbed: 105, 110, 115, 120, 125 ... and then slooooowed. At Furnace Creek, the ticks on the big digital thermometer moved at a glacial pace. It hit 126, 127, 128.

Where it stopped Friday is the source of some debate. Some say 129. Some say above 130, which would make it the hottest June day in U.S. history (yawn). Saturday was about the same,

Government meteorologists said only numbers from official weather stations count. It never got above 129 degrees at Furnace Creek, much less 134.

Bottom line: No record. At least not at Furnace Creek. Never mind what may or may not have happened at Badwater Basin. Or at Coffin Peak, Ash Meadows, Hell's Gate, the Funeral Mountains, Devil's Gate or any of the other of the Hades-like named real estate out there.

So, Death Valley National Park won't have to cancel its centennial celebration of The Hottest Day in History. And Carlson didn't get to record a day for the ages, just a day that perhaps aged him a bit. Still, his pictures are testimony to tourists' ability to weather the elements, as long as they have sunblock, bottled water, GPS, an air-conditioned car – and a smartphone camera to capture it all. With global warming, they can all wave goodbye to their fellow hot nuts and just say, "See you next year."